Chapter 1 A Strange Feeling

This feeling was quite peculiar.

Duncan could clearly sense things from afar—he could feel the Shiguang floating on the boundless sea. That living ghost ship was constantly charting new routes on the map under the control of a goat-headed figure. A cursed doll with a not-so-sturdy head wandered around the cabins, familiarizing itself with the ship's environment as if on an adventure. The deep, dark sea slowly rose and fell around them, concealing countless strange things within.

Yet, in his other vision, he was sitting in an antique shop in the lower district of Pland City-State. The sounds of people and carriages from the street reached his ears, only highlighting the shop's tranquility. A human girl named Nina sat across from him, daintily eating the cheapest cake in the lower district.

He was Captain Duncan, the master of the Shiguang, the mobile calamity of the boundless sea—yet he sat here like an ordinary person, eating his breakfast, immersed in the peaceful depths of the city.

Perhaps it was just his imagination, but he felt a part of himself that had always been suspended and uneasy slowly settling down. It might have been the tension that had built up over time on the ghost ship, or it might have been something else, but he felt that it couldn't be a bad thing.

Seeming to notice the gaze from beside her, Nina, who was eating her cake, suddenly looked up. She curiously glanced at Duncan, "Uncle Duncan, aren't you going to eat?"

Duncan looked at the food on her plate, "Is that enough for you?"

"It's enough. It's not good to eat too many sweets."

"Mm."

Duncan nodded, picked up the cake, and took a bite. He carefully savored the rich flavor that he hadn't tasted in a long time, feeling the crude sweetness slowly melt in his mouth—and then, he clearly perceived his body beginning to process the food he had eaten.

He felt a little more at ease, knowing that things were as he had expected.

This body was "easier to use" than the shell he had temporarily occupied the first time—its "parts" were complete and intact. Not much time had passed since its death, and his soul's takeover was almost a seamless restart of the vitality within the body. This was completely different from that broad-minded corpse.

He could breathe now, his blood was flowing, and his heart was beating—although the beating seemed a little slow, it should still be within the normal range.

He shouldn't have to worry about the body decaying, saving him the trouble of calculating how to soak it in preservatives. Moreover, this way, it would be less likely to be exposed in front of ordinary people.

However, there was one thing Duncan was still unsure about.

He knew that this body of his should have some kind of illness—in the memories he had devoured, the negative impression of being plagued by a lingering illness was more profound than all other memories. Moreover, the liquor and painkillers he had found in the cabinet were also proof of this.

He didn't know what illness this body had suffered from before, because the time of onset and the triggers seemed to be memories from a long time ago, already blurred. But one thing was clear: at this moment, apart from the weakness brought about by ordinary human constitution, he didn't feel anything wrong with this body.

Had the illness disappeared? Had the body healed itself because of his journey through the spirit world? Or was it because the projected soul was ultimately limited in its perception, so that he couldn't actually feel the body's problems, and the body's health was actually still deteriorating?

Duncan pondered as he ate his meal without showing any sign. Then, he suddenly glanced at Nina, who was eating across from him, "Don't you have school today?"

Nina lived in the lower district, and her economic conditions weren't great, but Pland City-State had obviously developed to the point where basic education was relatively widespread. She was currently attending a school jointly run by the church and the city hall, majoring in steam engine technology—this kind of school could be seen as a "vocational high school," mainly to supply skilled steam craftsmen to factories and churches.

Half of Nina's tuition was paid by her uncle, and the other half came from city hall subsidies.

For a city-state that had developed into the industrial age, even subsidizing the training of such craftsmen was well worth it—and undeniably, this kind of school with a very clear purpose also at least solved the problem of illiteracy among the common people.

Nina was very studious. In her uncle's memory, this girl had relatively excellent grades in all her courses.

"I don't have any classes this morning," Nina nodded. "I only have two history classes in the afternoon. Also, I have to talk to Mrs. White this afternoon and tell her I won't be staying in the dorm for a few days..."

Duncan suddenly stopped his movements. He looked at Nina very seriously and asked, "Don't you think staying here to take care of someone like me will delay a lot of things? You can live at school long-term. That might be more helpful for your studies."

Nina was stunned. She looked at her "Uncle Duncan" blankly, then suddenly became angry, "You shouldn't say that! You're just sick. Just take your medicine according to the doctor's advice—Mom and Dad entrusted you to me..."

"Your mom and dad entrusted you to me," Duncan corrected her very seriously. He organized his words using the memories in his mind as he spoke, "You were only six years old then."

"But I'm seventeen now," Nina pouted, stabbing the last small piece of cake with her fork. "You're even less capable of taking care of yourself than I am—if I really moved out, you'd make a mess of the room in less than three days. In fact, you can even let me help manage the store, at least clean it up. The display window is so dirty you can barely see through it..."

Duncan listened with some helplessness to the girl's rambling "lecture." He hadn't expected that a casual "test" of his would elicit such a big reaction from her.

But slowly, he couldn't help but laugh.

He felt a kind of warmth from this girl named "Nina"... a warm, sunny kind of warmth.

"Okay, I was just saying," he shook his head, stirring the last bit of soup in his bowl. "History class in the afternoon... How have you been doing in history class lately?"

"Uncle Duncan, are you really okay?" Nina opened her eyes wide in surprise. "You never used to... well, at least not in the last two years, you've never asked me about school."

Duncan opened his mouth, about to say something, but the girl went on speaking to herself, "We've been talking about ancient history lately. Mr. Morris is telling us about the events after the Great Annihilation... To be honest, it's quite interesting. Ancient history sounds like a lot of it is like a story, much more interesting than modern and contemporary history."

Duncan thought for a moment, then said with a serious expression, "Sounds like you're doing well? Then let me test you. What are the related concepts of the Great Annihilation?"

Uncle Duncan was very strange today. Although she couldn't say what was strange, he was just different from usual.

But Nina didn't think too much about it—compared to her uncle's slightly strange words and actions, this simple girl was now even happier that Uncle Duncan had finally perked up and seemed to be in a good mood.

She was very happy that Uncle Duncan was asking about exactly what she had just mastered.

So, with a smug smile, she began to tell Duncan the knowledge she had just learned:

"The Great Annihilation happened about ten thousand years ago—although for unknown reasons, ethnic minorities with unique cultural traditions such as the elves, the Senkin, and the Gyprocs record inconsistent times in their calendars, but overall, the archaeologically recognized time of the Great Annihilation is at the end of the Order Era, ten thousand years ago..."

Duncan listened with a calm expression.

His mind was full of question marks.

Elves? Senkin? Gyprocs? What was going on? So there weren't only humans on land as intelligent races? And elves... was this the same concept as the "elves" he understood? Could it be that there were elven city-states living in the steam industrial age in the boundless sea?

He couldn't help but imagine some very bizarre scenes in his mind, while Nina's voice still came from across from him:

"...Various city-states have some discrepancies in their records of the Great Annihilation, but the more common parts are that the Order Era before the Great Annihilation was a far more prosperous, stable, and safe era than today. At that time, there were extremely vast continents, the ocean area was far less boundless than it is today, and neither the ocean nor the land had so-called 'reality borders' like ends...

"The era after the Great Annihilation is called the 'Deep Sea Era.' The Deep Sea Era has continued to this day, and there are still no signs of it ending. The most significant feature of the Deep Sea Era is that the boundless sea covers almost the entire world, and only less than 10% of the old era's land remains, and it is all divided into islands or 'mist-shrouded realms' of various sizes. Many of today's city-states are built on relatively stable islands, and various ocean-going ships have become a means of mutual exchange and communication between the islands.

"In the early Deep Sea Era, the remnants of the old world suffered heavy losses, and almost all of the old civilization was destroyed. The 'Ancient Kingdom of Crete,' which initially rose from the ruins, is the earliest verifiable civilization ancestor of the Deep Sea Era, although the duration of this ancient kingdom was less than a century, it left behind a large number of legacies with far-reaching influence on later generations, including the most primitive and superficial classification methods for many anomalies and visions of the Deep Sea Era, as well as a large number of valuable experiences for maintaining survival in the Deep Sea Era..."